The USB 3.1, type C standard have been around long enough such that the connectors and chips are readily available. But, it's a more complex set up and may have far more capabilities than is needed in your design. As... Read more

There are a lot of polar opposites in the "what is my philosophy" world: Mac vs. PC, on shore vs. off shore manufacturing, Ford vs. Chevy, Atmel vs. Microchip (well, maybe not that one so much any more), auto router... Read more

A lot of factors go into the decision to hand build or outsource circuit boards. I hand build my own sometimes, simply because I enjoy the challenge. Of course most of the projects I design are for my own use,... Read more

It wasn't terribly long ago that pretty much every cell phone came out with its own custom charging cable. It was a major step forward when they all (except Apple) standardized on the USB micro-B connector. However, there are a... Read more

The continuing saga of the 0.4 mm pitch KL03 ARM microcontroller. If you haven't yet done so, read part I, and part II. Today, I have a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly - or more accurately,... Read more

I'm a bit behind in my blog work - well, way behind, actually. I started this series back in January with the intro post. Here's where I am right now: I have three different sets of PC boards. One set,... Read more

I've written a few times about the new Freescale KL03 ARM Cortex M0+ microcontroller. This particular part comes only in very small packages, with the smallest being a 1.6mm x 2mm WLCSP (wafer level, chip scale package) 0.4mm pitch, 20... Read more

We have a number of manufacturing engineers running around here at Screaming Circuits. They're very good at what they do, as are our operators and technicians. They are not, however, electrical engineers. Our parent company has a big group of... Read more

At the moment, I'm working on an Arduino compatible clock. Like most of my Arduino compatible boards, this one uses an Atmega32U4, with USB built in. With the Atmega32U4, I sacrifice a little in program memory and SRAM, but gain... Read more

A while back, I wrote about a new ARM Cortex M0+ chip from Freescale. It's not the first M0+, but I do believe that it's the smallest. I've been checking stock off and on and finally found the smallest package... Read more